


runner

by queenundisputed



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-09
Updated: 2014-03-09
Packaged: 2018-01-15 03:06:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1288861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenundisputed/pseuds/queenundisputed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You’ll be lost for a very long time if you don’t know what it is you’re looking for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	runner

**Author's Note:**

  * For [starzangelus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/starzangelus/gifts).



"This is all your fault," she says, whirling around to face him with a grim expression on her face. Better to look at him than the green foliage surrounding her on every side. There are massive walls of ivy that look so green and lush that she's half convinced it isn't real. She doesn't have much experience with magical plants, but these definitely are; she'd bet her life on it. They whisper as though wind were snaking through the nonexistent cracks between the vines and leaves. It sounds rather suspiciously like her name.

He's frowning at her, his eyebrows drawn together and his mouth pinched together in a firm, unyielding line. It probably isn't his fault after all, but she needs someone to blame right at this moment. Without something to focus her mind on, she might start laughing hysterically and never be able to stop. Her life is one magical disaster after another, and she's kind of sick of it.

At least when she was mired in the previous disaster, she was relatively safe with her son, and more importantly, she didn't even remember that she had anything to worry about at all.

That was preferable to whatever this new calamity was.

"We should move," he says suddenly, moving to stand by her side. "It's highly likely we only have thirteen hours, love, and we shouldn't waste a single second of it standing around if we want to reach the center."

"Hold on a second, the center of what?" she asks.

He waves a hand to encompass the massive green wall on their other side and the pathways that spread out before them. "The labyrinth, darling."

She opens her mouth but snaps it shut. What could she possibly say to _that_ , after all? He raises an eyebrow at her, and she glares at him before resolutely turning around to start down the path behind them.

"This is ridiculous," she mutters.

"More ridiculous than a beanstalk?" he asks, having caught up to her and matched her pace, step for step.

"Definitely," she says, and she's grinning at him before she realizes what she's doing. Too late to take it back, she merely turns her attention back to the maze in front of her in order to ignore his answering smirk.

"Why did you come back, anyway?" she asks suddenly because she isn't quite clear on that part. Perhaps he had explained it to her when she hadn't remembered who he was. At any rate, in the ensuing chaos of her memory suddenly re-writing itself--again--she hadn't had time to clarify the specifics.

"We needed you," he says simply, but his face is grave and his voice low when he says it. It's enough for her.

"And we're here because...?"

"It's a long way home," he says, and he reaches out, blocking her path with his arm. "Which way?"

She looks at the two paths presented to her for a moment before looking over at him. “I don’t know, pirate. You tell me.”

“As you wish, Swan,” he says, and he chooses the left path; the one farthest away from her.

As they walk in silence, the walls of green grow higher, and soon they are walking in shadow, the light dimming to almost nothing. She wishes, for a moment, that she had her gun, but if they are anywhere near the Enchanted Forest at all, she thinks, then perhaps it’s better that it was left behind in that beautiful apartment that was never really hers to begin with.

The whispering of the wind gets louder, and she isn’t ashamed to say that she moves closer to the comforting shape of the pirate walking beside her. If he notices, he doesn’t say anything. He does remove his sword from its scabbard, however, and she’s thankful that at least one of them thought to bring a serviceable weapon to whatever fight they’ve gotten themselves into now.

The wind is definitely saying her name. Not wind at all actually, and the voice is Henry’s. He’s crying out for her somewhere ahead, and it is as if her vision tunnels down into one focused point of light leading her toward that voice. Her kid will not suffer if she has anything to say about it. She ignores Hook beside her even as he tells her to ignore the cries, that they can’t be Henry because Henry is safe with Regina already. It sounds like Henry, and he sounds scared. She can’t ignore that no matter what she thinks she knows.

She takes off running, leaving Hook behind. She ignores him when he calls out to her. She knows what she hears, and she’ll be damned if she’ll put her own safety before that of Henry’s; not now, not ever.

She turns a corner, and comes face to face with a wide, gaping, black hole of a mouth. Lining it from top to bottom are shiny, pointed teeth. Saliva drips from the top row, and from the throat, a satisfied growl rumbles out. Henry’s cries have stopped, and Emma barely has time to think that Hook was right after all, it was a trap, before she has to drop to the ground and roll past the monster as its gaping maw closes on the air where, only moments before, her head had been.

From her vantage point behind the monster, she sees Hook round the corner, yelling her name. He brandishes his sword at the monster without a second thought, immediately in battle mode.

“Fancy a bit of pirate meat, do you, mate? Well, let me tell you, it’s harder work than you might think, but I’ll give you a chance at it. Come on,” he taunts the black beast with a shit eating grin on his face. Emma rolls her eyes. She was under the impression that he had cultivated impressive self-preservation skills over the years, but maybe she needed to re-evaluate. He had a bad habit of insulting creatures that were bigger than him.

But it’s as good a plan as any, she supposes, and she starts waving her hands and yelling for the beast’s attention too.

Confused the beast whirls around, letting out a loud roar and striking any available surface with its wickedly sharp looking claws as it went. Not something she wanted to get up close and personal with any time soon. She ducks to the side, and covers her ears when the beast lets out an ear piercing yelp. She hopes the sound means that Hook has struck true with his sword. Looking up, she is gratified to see that he has, and he pulls his sword out of the creature’s back, looking less than amused at the black goop covering his blade.

“Stuck your sword somewhere you shouldn’t have, Hook?” she asks, giving him a smirk of her own.

“This is the treatment I get for saving a lady’s life, I see,” he replies, moving around the hulking heap of dead black creature with care as he makes his way to her side again.

“It was a team effort,” Emma says with a shrug.

“If by that you mean that your contribution was to put yourself in harm’s way to begin with, Swan, then I concur,” he says, and when she turns away from him, intending to walk forward, he reaches out for her arm.

“I would prefer if we stayed together at all times during this little adventure, Swan. For your safety and for mine,” he says, looking into her eyes with a great deal of intensity when she turns to face him.

She knocks his hand off her arm, but she nods. “Fine.”

Laughter from above catches their attention at once, and craning her neck, Emma can see a woman perching on the top of the nearest labyrinth wall.

“Aren’t you two adorable?”

Emma knows that voice. “Regina?”

“I don’t think so,” Hook says under his breath.

The woman, who looks exactly like Regina for all that she might not be, is instantly in front of them, the swirling purple mist of her magic curling around her ankles. In a red suit with matching shoes and lipstick, not a hair out of place, and her lips curving into a wicked smile, Emma can’t believe that it isn’t Regina.

“What are you doing here?” Emma asks, disbelief clinging to the edges of her voice for all that she tries to act calm and unaffected.

“Cleaning up your messes as usual, Miss Swan,” Regina says, and she looks over at the black beast with a shake of her head. She waves her hand, and the monster disappears as though it were never there to begin with.

Hook brings his sword up, pointing it at Regina. “What are you?”

“Now, now, there’s no need for all this posturing,” Regina says, and with another disinterested wave of her hand, Hook’s sword turns to putty in his hand. “I’m perfectly harmless. In fact, I’m here to help you.”

“Like hell you are, demon,” Hook says, and Emma only just manages to hold him back from leaping onto Regina. His feral growl dies on his lips as Emma yanks him back to her side, her fingers curled around the leather of his coat.

“Such hostility! And here I thought we were friends, Killian,” Regina says, folding her arms behind her back in a show of passivity. Emma would have bought it too, but the grin on Regina’s face, well, Emma’s seen that grin before, and nothing about it bodes well.

“Were you actually who you masquerade as, demon, we would be, but alas, there is only darkness in you,” Hook says, and Emma shivers at his tone. Even when he’d left her to rot in a cell, he’d never directed a voice that cold toward her.

“Ah, but darkness is one of your oldest friends, Killian,” Regina says and her eyes are practically twinkling with glee. “But I can see where I’m not wanted.”

Emma bites her tongue, trying not to ask for Regina’s help because Hook is so convinced that it isn’t Regina and, looking at the thing’s face, Emma is pretty convinced too. She knows Regina, and it might have been over a year since she’d seen the woman, but Emma highly doubts Regina would be…like this.

The thing wearing Regina’s face looks at Emma, and its mouth curls into a massive grin, white teeth contrasting beautifully with its red lips. “Don’t worry, Miss Swan; I’m not as cruel as all that. I’ve left you a clue.”

With that, it slowly fades out of sight, disappearing bit by bit into purple smoke until only a hint of smile is left behind.

“That was creepy,” Emma comments, trying to shake off the feeling of wrongness that has taken up residency in her bones.

“Come on,” Hook says, shortly, grabbing her hand, “We need to keep moving.”

“We don’t even know where we’re going,” Emma says, trying to tug her hand away as he forcefully drags her ahead. “Hey, let go!”

He does as she asks, but he whirls around to face her. He looks almost manic, she can see it in his eyes.

“Hey, Hook, it’s going to be okay,” Emma says, and she can’t believe she’s comforting him at this point.

“How am I supposed to keep you safe if you keep putting yourself in danger?” he asks, using his one good hand to cup her cheek.

She glares at him. “I don’t need you to keep me safe, Hook. I can do that on my own.”

“Could have fooled me, love, with the way you’ve been acting.”

“I’m out of practice, is all. You’re the one acting strange,” she says, and then it hits her. She backs up slowly, one step by agonizing step.

“If Regina wasn’t Regina…” she says, softly, and his eyes go wide when he realizes the conclusion she’s come to.

“Swan, I was with you before we came to the labyrinth. I can’t be its creature,” he says, looking at her with his impossibly blue eyes. She refuses to be swayed by them.

“So was Regina, remember? She was there, at the portal you made, to take Henry before it closed unexpectedly. But that thing back there wasn’t Regina. And maybe you aren’t Captain Hook,” Emma says, turning quickly, and then she starts to run.

\---

She’s never found herself in a situation where the phrase ‘run like the hounds of hell are chasing you’ has ever applied, but now, she gets it. She runs faster than she ever has in her life, and she makes her turns without thinking much about the consequences. She just knows she wants to get as far away from whatever it was that looked like Hook as she can. The thing that wasn’t Regina hadn’t bothered her as much as the thing that was not Hook did. It made her skin feel itchy just thinking about it.

A little laugh from high above stops her again, and suddenly the thing that isn’t Regina is in front of her again.

“One more turn, Miss Swan,” it says, holding up a perfectly manicured finger, “you’re almost there!”

Emma pushes past it and keeps running, its laugh echoing in her ears. And then she sees what the creature meant. She skids to a stop rather abruptly and only just manages not to fall down. In front of her is an ornate stone slab, and on top of the slab lies a girl with gorgeous red hair fanning out behind her like a bloody halo. Emma takes slow steps toward the girl who she hopes is merely sleeping, panting as she goes.

When she’s finally close enough to see, the scene takes what little air she’s managed to suck in away from her immediately. The girl—Emma recognizes her, but she can’t remember her name; everything from Storybrooke is still a little hazy unless one of the main players is involved—is definitely, without a doubt dead. Her chest cavity has been cracked open, and Emma isn’t a doctor, but she’s completely sure that where the girl’s heart is supposed to be is empty save for an origami fish.

Emma reaches out with an unsteady hand, her thumb and finger gripping the little paper fish far too tightly as she removes it from the girl’s chest. Like a game of Operation, she tries not to touch any of the girl’s flesh or bone on her way out.

Footsteps come to a halt behind her, and Hook asks, “Swan?”

“She’s dead,” Emma says, her voice flat.

“I can see that, love,” Hook says, and Emma doesn’t feel that tell-tale itch of wrongness when he comes to stand beside her.

“This was inside her,” Emma says, holding up the little paper fish. Dried blood covers its bottom and stains its sides. It’s delicate and grotesque. Emma doesn’t know what to do with it.

Hook takes the decision away from her when he removes it from her hand, unfolding the paper until it lays flat in his palm. “It’s blank.”

Emma sighs, thinking it would be better if the girl could be buried, but there’s only stone under her feet and green maze walls all around. “I guess we should just keep going,” she decides.

“You’ll let me come with you?” Hook asks, his eyebrows lifting in surprise.

She thinks for a moment, studying him carefully. His appearance is exactly right,--all worn black leather and dark brooding looks--but the creature wearing Regina’s face had looked exactly how she knows Regina would. The fact that Hook looks like the pirate she knows isn’t as reassuring as it should be. Still there is no evil in his eyes like the other creature. His lips aren’t twisted into a mockery of a smile. He looks more lost than anything. He looks a lot like how she feels, actually. That’s what spurs her to make a decision. She believes that he is who he appears to be, and that itchy feeling underneath her skin subsides. 

“Yeah, but no more of that macho stuff, okay? I don’t like being pulled around,” Emma says.

“Of course, love,” Hook says, and then he’s silent for a moment, looking at the ground instead of at her. When he lifts his gaze to meet hers once more, he finally says, “I lost you once, remember? I don’t think I could bear to do it again.”

And then he’s walking away from her and the stone slab with the dead girl resting atop it. Emma follows, not sure if she’s touched by his devotion to her or not. She’d forgotten how intense he was about the whole thing; how one kiss, for him, was a whole new world, and for her, it was just a kiss. A good kiss, to be sure, but still just a kiss. Then again, she thinks, one good kiss can lead to so much more.

\---

They’ve been walking for what seems like hours. The sun never appears to move from its position directly above the labyrinth, and she’s fairly certain the watch she doesn’t wear on her wrist wouldn’t work anyway. Her feet are a little sore from the endless plodding along, but otherwise she doesn’t seem to be overly tired or hungry just yet.

“How close do you think we are?” she asks, quietly.

“Difficult to say. Labyrinths are tricky things, love, and they often have minds of their own,” Hook says, “I beat this maze once before, on my way to you, but it looked quite a bit different from how it appears to us now.”

“And why did they send you?” Emma asks, finally, because she had been wondering from the start. He wasn’t exactly the type to blend in, and god knew he’d caused enough trouble on appearance alone when he’d come to fetch her in the middle of an utterly normal, non-magical city wearing all leather and boasting a deadly hook instead of a hand. And given that Henry was part of the equation, it seemed like Regina would have been a better fit for any rescue attempt.

“Ah, that I can’t tell you. The Queen insisted, and who am I to defy royalty?” Hook says with a smile on his face. Self-depreciating maybe but it’s gone before Emma has the chance to study it properly.

“Regina sent you?”

“That she did, love. As I said, she was quite insistent that I be the one to fetch you.”

“Weird,” Emma replies, twisting her mouth into a little frown.

“Would you have preferred another?” Hook asks, glancing at her out of the corner of his eye, and Emma knows he’s fishing for something from her.

“Well, Regina probably could’ve snapped her fingers and had us to the center of the labyrinth in a heartbeat,” Emma says, and she watches his face fall with some interest before she bumps his shoulder with her own. “But nah, I’m glad it’s you, Hook.”

“That is gratifying to hear,” Hook replies. She smiles at him, briefly, before the sharp cry of what sounds like a bird interrupts them.

Ahead of them, flying far too close to the top of the labyrinth for comfort, is the largest bird Emma has ever seen in her life. The sun turns it into a dark silhouette, but Emma can see the bright, fiery red-orange of its plumage even through the shadows. It opens its beak, and Emma expects another sharp cry. Instead she gets fire. The bird is breathing fire, and it’s heading their way. She tenses the muscles in her legs, ready to run.

Looking at Hook, she can tell he’s thinking the same thing, and with a muttered curse of “bloody hell” from him, they are both running in unison back the way they came.

“We are never going to get to the center of the labyrinth at this rate,” Emma pants out as they run at breakneck speed, the heat of the fire behind them nipping at their heels.

“Have faith, Swan. There’s still ho—Here!” He breaks off abruptly, grabs her hand before she runs past him, and pulls her into an alcove the maze has spontaneously created.

“That was not here before,” Emma says, looking around suspiciously, and her eyes are drawn to the stone slab sitting in the middle of the empty space. “Oh no, we’re back to where we were earlier.”

Before she can fall too deeply into despair over losing so much time, the thing that is not Regina appears before her once more. “Are you, dear? Perhaps you should look again.”

Emma looks at Hook who shrugs a little and gestures her forward with his hook, clearly seeing no danger in seeing what the not Regina creature wants them to see. So together they creep toward the stone slab, and Emma closes her eyes and presses her lips together because if the first one was bad, this one is worse. The girl on the slab is one she recognizes immediately; it’s Aurora. It doesn’t look like the girl went quietly either and that fits exactly with what Emma knows about the Princess; there is a large purple bruise on the side of her face, blood at her temple, and just like before, her chest cavity has been crudely cracked open.

Emma walks just a little bit closer, trying her best not to give into the urge to dry heave, and inside Aurora’s chest sits a little paper dragon. Emma picks it up and crushes it in her hands. Two dead bodies now and for what? All to bring her home? She gives Hook her dirtiest look.

“There better be a lot of trouble to be worth all this,” she snarls.

“There were dangers when I ran this labyrinth, love, but nothing quite like this. I know not why it has taken this form for you, but I assure you, the peril your family faces without you is worth any sacrifice. Family is always worth the sacrifice,” Hook says, his voice softer and his eyes distant as he finishes speaking. Emma knows he’s not talking about her family anymore, and though his statement isn’t universally true—she’s seen enough cruelty between families to know that sometimes your family isn’t worth a single thing—there’s a part of her that fiercely agrees. She and her parents had their differences, but if she could save them, she’d do almost anything. And for Henry? Well, saving him was worth anything.

“Perhaps you simply haven’t reached the heart of the matter, hm?” Emma jumps at the voice that whispers close to her ear. She’d forgotten that creature that wasn’t Regina was still hovering nearby.

“You mean the heart of the labyrinth?” Emma asks.

“That would be telling, dear, and I would hate to ruin the surprise,” the creature says, its wide, all knowing grin still firmly in place.

“I hate surprises,” Emma mutters.

“As do I,” Hook agrees. “So I think it is high time I loosened your tongue, demon.”

Hook pulls a dagger from his boot, and in a flash, her has it pressed against the creature’s neck, his arm wrapped firmly about its middle.

“I don’t respond well to threats, pirate, but you know that already,” the creature says as purple smoke curls around its body. “Until next we meet, Miss Swan.”

And then Hook is holding only air. “Wretched creature,” he says, sliding his dagger safely back into his boot.

Emma looks back at Aurora’s cold and lifeless body. “These are the most gruesome mile markers I’ve ever seen.”

Hook raises an eyebrow in question, and Emma says, “These…bodies—real or not—are marking our way to the middle of the labyrinth, I think.”

“That is gruesome, indeed.”

“But it means we’re on the right track,” Emma says with a pleased bob of her head. “We just have to find the next one.”

Hook looks at her for a long moment, and Emma taps her foot, waiting for him to spit it out already.

“Do you still have the paper from her chest?” he asks once Emma is good and irritated and almost ready to walk off without him.

She holds out the paper still crumpled in her hand, and he takes it from her, fingers moving rapidly until the shape Emma had destroyed in her dismay has reappeared good as new, if a little wrinkled. Hook hands it back to her.

“What do you want me to do with it?” Emma asks, looking from Hook to the dragon in her palm and back again.

“It’s our guide, love, and I need you to animate it for us,” Hook replies as if it’s really quite simple and he can’t believe she hasn’t already figured it out.

“How do you expect me to do that?” she asks, and he just looks at her. Then it hits her. Regina isn’t the only one with magic to spare; Emma has a bit of her own power too. So she stares quite intently at the little paper dragon in her palm and wills it to show them the way. She uses her desire to get back to her son, to find her family again, and to get Hook out of this mess to fuel her will, and soon enough, the little dragon has stretched its wings and risen from her hand and into the air all on its own.

Hook looks at her, his head tilted to the side and a secret smile on his face. “Well done, Swan.”

She smiles back at him, and the compliment warms her all the way to her toes. The appreciation in his eyes isn’t for what she’s doing to help them; it’s all for her alone, and that makes her feel a little dizzy because it’s been a rare thing for her. She shakes her head to dispel the feeling because she needs to focus, and the little dragon zips out of the alcove and back into the maze.

Thinking that it was time for a little quid pro quo, Emma takes Hook’s hand and drags him back out into the maze, following the little dragon as it flies ahead of them. Emma can smell the smoke from the burnt out areas of the maze behind them, but the bird is nowhere to be seen and the little dragon seems very sure of where it’s heading. They have to run, again, in order to keep up with the little fire spitting beast, but Emma is glad that this time, at least, they aren’t running because of apparent danger.

She keeps hold of Hook’s hand until the dragon stops at a crossroads in the maze and seems to wait for them to catch up. Emma stops, bending down to prop herself up on her knees, and breathes hard. She’d had a boyfriend once—or rather, in the life Regina crafted for her, she’d had this boyfriend—that had been obsessed with fitness; she thinks, idly, that he would have loved this little adventure. Hook, panting just as heavily beside her, seems to agree with her philosophy on life: running sucks.

Emma looks up at the paper dragon that hovers in the air at the crossroads, and she frowns. “I thought you said it was a guide?”

“It was merely a guess based on your observation about the, ah, deceased,” Hook replies, looking at the dragon with a frown that matches Emma’s own.

Purple smoke, out of nowhere, coils its way around the little paper dragon’s body, and in an instant, the dragon has disappeared.

“Hey!” Emma yells out, standing from her crouch and looking around for the one responsible. She assumes that it is the creature that wears Regina’s face, but instead she sees a new kind of creature sitting quite happily on the nearest section of maze wall.

“Ah, ah, dearie! What fun is it if you don’t find your way on your own?” the creature asks, and even with the higher pitch, she recognizes the voice as Gold’s.

“The only one who would get any pleasure out of that is you, crocodile,” Hook says, and Emma can see that he has pulled his dagger out of his boot again. Not that it did them much good the first time.

Gold giggles—and that’s not something she ever needed to hear, honestly—and then as abruptly as he had appeared, he’s gone again. Emma groans and turns back to the crossroads. “What do we do now?”

“Though I am loath to suggest it, darling, I think we must split up,” Hook says.

Emma looks at the two paths in front of them with a skeptical eye. “That sounds like a bad idea. How we will find each other again?”

Hook is quiet for a moment, and he just looks at her as though he is still lost in more ways than one. Emma swallows, and his eyes follow the movement of her throat. It’s oddly intimate.

She almost thinks he won’t break the silence, that he’ll just keep drinking her in with his eyes forever. But he does.

“I’m not certain there are better options available at present, love.”

“So you’re going to leave me then?” The words burst forth from her mouth before she has any time to think them over. She wouldn’t have ever dared to say them otherwise because they are deeply true, and that makes her vulnerable. She breathes in sharply and turns away from him. She doesn’t see how his face softens, how his hand comes up as if he were to touch her, and how it falls again without finding its purpose.

“If you ask me not to go, Emma, I will stay by your side without a second thought,” he says.

And she starts to ask him, she really does, but a deep rumbling from the maze that makes the hedges tremble and the stone under her feet shake stops her tongue.

“That sounds like trouble,” Emma says in lieu of any emotional confessions.

The labyrinth’s response comes from the walls that suddenly begin to move and undulate as new vines grow and creep out until Emma and Hook both find their extremities tightly bound. Together they are pulled into the labyrinth wall and darkness envelops them.

\---

“The trouble I go through for the both of you,” the creature wearing Regina’s face says, looking at its nails with a little frown.

Emma opens her eyes, and she sits up, flailing her arms in an attempt to throw off hedge vines that are no longer wrapped around her in a suffocating embrace. Beside her, Hook does the same thing, cutting at the air with his hook.

“You look ridiculous,” the creature says. “Do try to get yourselves under control.”

“Easy for you to say,” Emma grumbles. She looks around, but all she sees is maze and more maze. At least it was where it belonged: in neat hedge rows and nowhere near her body.

“We are never going to find the next mile marker at this rate,” Emma says, standing and dusting herself off. She narrows her eyes at the creature and silently debates whether or not she feels capable of going head to magical head with it in order to make it take them to the labyrinth’s center.

“No, you’re not, and trust me, Miss Swan, that little scenario you’ve concocted in your head would not go well for you,” the creature says, leaping back to sit on top of the hedge row behind it.

“You could take us if you were so inclined, demon,” Hook says with a smirk that Emma thinks is supposed to be enticing.

“Perhaps I could, perhaps I couldn’t. What matters, pirate, is that I won’t.”

“Why the bloody hell not?” Hook yells up at the grinning creature. It looks far too pleased with itself.

“Because that wouldn’t be entertaining, right?” Emma asks, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Now you’re getting it! But I wouldn’t worry too much about it, dear, because I do have a vested interest in getting you where you want to go,” it says, and then, as an afterthought it adds, “You and your pirate.”

She looks at Hook and waits until he looks back at her. She smiles when their eyes meet. “We’re a team, remember? We can do this, you and I,” she says.

He winks at her. “Ah now, there’s the Emma Swan I fancy. Quite sure of us, are you?”

“More than you know,” she says, and the look on his face and the creature’s eye roll are totally worth it.

\---

“The demon said to continue walking, Swan, so that’s what we must do. Were we not attempting to escape then, perhaps, we could spend a little of our precious time exploring this land. But, alas, we do have a mission, and so it would not be prudent to—ah!” Emma stops Hook’s rant by pulling him to the side of the maze, pressing his body as tightly to hers as she can manage while she squeezes herself up against the wall.

His hand comes up to cradle her face, and he looks down at her with a smirk playing at his lips. “Well, hello there,” he says, and then the giant stone that had been barreling their way rumbles past them. Emma breathes a sigh of relief and then pushes him backwards.

“I think that’s what’s known as saving your ass, Hook,” Emma says, shortly, and then she walks past him with her head held high.

“That it is, love. Thank you,” he says as he jogs to catch up with her.

“I think that, as my reward, you should shut up for awhile,” Emma says, and she holds her finger to her lips when he opens his mouth to retort. His mouth snaps shut, and she smiles.

There is quiet for a time which Emma appreciates. Everything in this place has been one drama after the other, and her head started spinning sometime between the fire breathing bird and the hedges coming to life and sucking them into their leafy depths. Hook’s silent, stalwart presence beside her is comfort enough.

He stops walking moments later, and she turns around to find the reason for his sudden stop. He points ahead with his hook, and Emma sees it. Ahead of them is the next stone slab, and even from a distance, Emma can tell that the woman who is lying on top of it has ebony hair. Considering the pattern the other corpses have formed, Emma has a fairly good idea of who it is. She’s seen the pictures in Henry’s story book after all, and hair as black as night only belongs to one princess. A lump forms in her throat, and without giving her much say in the matter, her feet seem rooted to the spot.

“Best not to go any farther, dearie; this one’s a bit gruesome even for you,” Gold says, appearing out of thin air and getting right up in her face with his teeth bared in a facsimile of a smile.

With one hand, Gold throws Hook to the side, and Hook stays down. He must have hit his head, Emma thinks, and it’s enough to snap her out of her dazed state.

“He better be okay, Gold,” Emma says as she pushes his face away from hers with her entire palm.

“Or what? You can’t kill me, dearie!” Gold says, jumping up and down with a little clap.

“No, but I will find some other way of taking you down,” Emma replies, glaring.

“You can’t even muster up the courage to have a look at what’s on that slab, Emma Swan,” he says, and the way he stresses her name makes her skin crawl. “Nothing about you inspires fear in me.”

“Maybe it should,” Emma says, all calm and quiet as she stares Gold down. He laughs, and the high pitch would make her wince if she wasn’t suddenly filled with power. It pulses in her chest and at the tips of her fingers, and she knows it’s hers to wield as she chooses. So she chooses to throw out her hands toward Gold, and when the light from her hands fades, Gold bursts into bits of golden glitter that glint in the sunlight as they drift toward the ground.

Taking a deep breath, she looks around just to make sure Gold is nowhere in sight, and when she is certain, she runs to Hook’s side. He’s lying flat on the ground with his back facing up, and she can’t tell, at first, if he’s breathing or not. She shakes his shoulder.

“Hook? Come on. Wake up,” she says, shaking his shoulder a little harder. When she gets no response, she reaches out two shaking fingers toward his wrist. She hesitates right before she touches his skin. Swallowing, she beats her nerves into submission, and the shaking subsides a little. She finally touches him, and she almost shrieks with joy when she finds a weak but steady pulse.

He still hasn’t moved though, and she can see the blood on the back of his head now. She doesn’t know how badly he’s hurt or when he’ll wake up. She looks at her hands, and she can feel the pulse of power again. Taking a deep breath, she moves her hands over his head and thinks about healing him. She sees him in her head sitting up and laughing at the panic etched into the lines of her face and shining out of her eyes. She hears him call her darling as he moves a strand of her hair behind her ear. She hears him whisper that everything will be alright. And she lifts her head until their lips are a breath away from each other—

Hook coughs and sits up with a groan. “What happened, Swan? Are you hurt?”

Emma leans back on her heels and lets the image in her head disappear as though it was never there. She’s lucky she isn’t prone to blushing or her thoughts would be written all over her face.

“I’m fine. He’s gone,” Emma says. “How’s your head?”

Hook prods at the back of his head with his fingers until he’s satisfied and then he nods at her. “It feels fine. Where did he go?”

“I…don’t know. I just did something and then he kind of turned into glitter?” Emma shrugs and makes a face at him.

Hook’s eyes gleam with amusement as he laughs. “I wish I had been conscious to see that, love.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she says with a roll of her eyes, but she does smile as she stands, offering him her hand. With him back on his feet, they turn, once more, toward the stone slab in the distance.

“Are you ready, Swan?”

“As I’ll ever be, I guess,” Emma says as she straightens her shoulders and clenches her hands into fists. She can do this. Odds are, it isn’t even real anyway. It won’t actually be her. It’ll be a fake. A doll. A very real looking doll but still just a doll.

“Everything will be fine, Emma,” Hook says softly as he places his hand on her back. She looks up at him.

“I hope so,” she says, and with him beside her, she walks forward.

\---

Even with Hook’s support at her back, it is still difficult to look at her mother’s body lying on the stone slab, pale and quiet in death. Someone has smeared blood over her mouth to preserve Snow White’s ruby red lips. Unlike the others, Snow White’s chest cavity is not cracked open. Instead, a sword juts obscenely out from the place where Emma knows her heart resides.

If she ever had any doubt that magic was behind all of this, she was totally sure now. When she reaches for the sword, she finds that, like all the others, this object is made of paper. It looks convincing enough, but she can feel the paper crush under the pressure of her grip. With great care, she pulls the sword from Snow White’s chest. She winces at the sucking sound the skin makes as the sword is finally removed, but then she turns her back on the corpse that wears her mother’s face. If she can’t see it then it is no longer there.

Instead she chooses to look down at the paper sword. Despite having been plunged into the chest of a woman, it’s oddly devoid of blood and gore. Emma takes a moment to appreciate this fact before getting down to business. She activates her will the same way she did with the dragon, and the sword glows blue for a moment before it spins around to point to the right path.

“I guess we go that way then.” 

\---

The maze ends abruptly, and Emma has never been so glad to leave green behind. The sword drops to the ground at her feet, and she picks it up, gazing up at the castle that now stands before her as she rises to her feet again.

The creature that isn’t Regina appears on the draw bridge over the castle’s moat, and she’s clapping as she walks toward them. “Oh bravo! You’ve made it out of the maze.”

“I am more than glad to leave that labyrinth behind,” Emma says, pushing her hair back out of her face and holding the paper sword slack in her hand.

“I said you made it out of the maze, dear, not the labyrinth,” The creature says waggling a finger at her in admonition.

“Aren’t they the same thing?” Emma asks, looking at Hook who seems as confused as she feels.

“I’m afraid not,” the creature says, and it turns, gesturing toward the castle. “The labyrinth continues.”

“Okay,” Emma says slowly, processing. “So we have to figure out the castle as well?”

The creature nods at her. “But first you have to make it through the gates, dear, and to do that, you have to make it past its gatekeeper.”

“I see no gatekeeper,” Hook says, narrowing his eyes, and Emma follows his train of thought with a growing sense of doom.

“You aren’t, by any chance, the gatekeeper, are you?” Emma asks the creature.

“Clever girl,” the creature says.

“And you’re not going to just let us pass out of the goodness of your heart, are you?” Emma knows it’s pointless to ask because the creature might not actually be Regina but it has chosen this face for a reason, she can tell, and that reason is definitely to screw with them. So of course it isn’t going to let them pass without a fight.

But she is pleasantly surprised when the creature’s answer is: “I might.”

There is a moment where Emma thinks that, maybe, they’ve won after all, but then the creature grins at her. “For the right price, of course,” it says.

“Name it,” Hook says, “and I will pay it.”

Emma looks up at Hook, and given how fast she turns her neck, she’s surprised she doesn’t have whiplash. “No way in hell, Hook,” she hisses at him, the words sliding from between her teeth quietly so that, hopefully, the creature won’t hear.

“I’ve got to get you home, love. I’m expendable. You, however, are most certainly not,” Hook says.

“If you two are quite finished with your bickering, we were attempting to come to some sort of satisfactory bargain,” the creature says.

“As I said, name your price, demon,” Hook says, moving to stand in front of Emma.

“Oh no you don’t,” Emma says, grabbing Hook’s arm roughly and pulling him back. “I told you at the beginning, we’re a team, and you don’t get to pull this macho man bullshit with me. Sacrificing yourself is not an option.”

“Swan, I am trying to get you back to your family. Whatever it takes, I plan to complete that task,” Hook says fiercely.

“There are better ways,” Emma replies, her grip on his arm still firm and her mouth an angry slash across her face.

The creature laughs, shaking its head. “The price is not yours to pay, pirate. It’s the savior that will owe me.”

Emma lets her hand slip away from Hook’s arm, and her own arm hangs limply at her side. Well, that changes things, doesn’t it?

Not to be outdone, Hook says, “Surely we can come to some sort of accord that leaves Swan unscathed?”

“Surely, my ass,” Emma bites out. “Tell me what you want.”

“I want to know, dear, what’s in your heart,” the creature says, and Emma thinks it must be joking.

“Does that involve cracking my chest and having a look around inside or something?” she asks.

“Not at all, dear. It’ll be painless, I promise,” the creature says, walking forward with a feral grin on its face.

“So it won’t hurt? I won’t die?”

“No, of course not.”

“And…whatever it is, I’ll still have it afterwards?”

“If you can find it again, certainly.”

“Wait,” Emma cries, “what does that mean?” But her words come too late, and the creature’s hand has already plunged into her chest. Emma feels the shock of cold, like water flowing through her veins, and she shivers. She shakes her head trying to dispel the black spots that have suddenly appeared in her vision, but they won’t budge. And then her eyesight clears of its own accord, but the world she sees is a dull grey, utterly lifeless. Until, that is, she looks at Hook. _Killian_ , a voice whispers in her mind, and it sounds like his voice, faded like a distant memory. He had told her that once, hadn’t he? But she can’t focus because he shines like a star, and her mind is hungry for that kind of brightness in a world lacking in luster.

Then it is over, and the world looks exactly the way it is supposed to again. Her knees are less inclined to hold her up, however, and she lowers herself slowly to the ground.

“Emma?” Hook— _Killian_ , the voice whispers again—rushes to her side as soon as she finds herself on the ground.

“I’m okay. I’m fine,” she says, pushing his hand away from her. She looks around, but finds that the creature is gone now. The way into the castle is clear.

\---

The castle is, well, exactly as she had always imagined a castle being. It was large, predominantly grey even inside, and a little bit drafty.

She looks at the staircase that runs up and out of sight. “Looks like the best way is up,” she says.

He nods, but he says nothing. His mouth is pressed into a hard line, and she can tell that he’s angry with her by the rigid way he holds his body and how he doesn’t quite meet her eyes.

She throws her hands in the air. “Alright, before we go any further, let’s just have this out, okay? What’s wrong with you?”

“You—” he says, but he doesn’t quite know how to finish if the way he repeats you over again is any indication, but he finds his equilibrium eventually. “You are the most frustrating woman I have ever met. You throw a fit when I attempt to sacrifice myself for you, but I am not allowed to return the favor when you put yourself in danger?”

“You’re angry with me for taking my life into my own hands?”

“No, Swan, I most certainly am not. You are a strong woman. You’ll do as you please, but I—” He stops abruptly again as though he doesn’t know how to continue. “I think I could love you, Emma Swan, but I will never find out if you continue to put yourself in danger time and time again when I could just as easily spare your life by giving my own!”

She puts her hand on her hip and levels him with her best no-nonsense glare. “You do realize the paradox in that, right?”

He simply stares at her with his wide blue eyes, and she can tell they are getting nowhere really fast.

“This is ridiculous. I don’t want you to die. You don’t want me to die. This is what it comes down to, right? So why don’t we agree to do our best not to die, especially not for or because of each other, any time soon, and move on?”

He does a pretty good impression of a fish which she thinks must be because of his up close and personal relationship with the sea, and then he nods. “I believe that is an acceptable compromise, love.”

“Great. Can we make our way upstairs now?” she asks, impatient and irritated.

“After you,” he says, softly and not unkindly so she sighs and tries not to snap back at him.

\---

There are a lot of doorways into empty rooms in this castle, or so she and Hook have found thus far. Truthfully, they don’t really know what it is they’re looking for, but Hook assures her that they will know it when they see it.

Emma opens the last door in the wing they’re currently searching. Once again, she finds another empty room. She shuts the door a little more forcefully than she intends to, and he gives her a look.

“What?” she asks.

“We’ll find it, Swan. Keep your chin up,” he says with a small smile. She groans, but she laughs too. That was probably the purpose, she thinks, as they climb another set of stairs, their footsteps falling into sync as easy as breathing.

The stairs twist and turn for a long while before they reach the top, and this is truly the topmost tower of the castle because there are no more stairs leading anywhere except down. Emma looks over at Hook, and her excitement is mirrored in the upwards turn of his mouth.

They walk down a long hallway, and the ornate carpet under their feet muffles their footfalls. The echoing thud and their breathing—a little heavy after the long trek upstairs—is all that fills the hallway. Emma can see out the windows that line the right wall, and the hedge maze stretches out beyond what she can see, a never-ending sea of green. She’s not sure how they made it through all that so quickly.

“It isn’t as big as it looks,” Hook says, quietly, and she nods. That is as good an explanation as any.

At last, they come to the end of the corridor, and there is only one door to choose from.

“Well, this will be easy then,” Emma says, but her hand hesitates over the doorknob. She looks over at Hook who gazes back at her, utterly calm. He lifts his chin a little, and she releases the breath she had been holding. The door opens at her slightest touch.

Inside the room, there is a bed draped with a gauzy canopy. It flutters in the breeze blowing in from the window cut into the stone of the wall. The flat sunlight filters in serenely illuminating the dust motes as they float through the air. Emma observes all of this as she avoids looking at who is sleeping in the bed. And she does hope they are just sleeping because she’s had enough corpses for one day, thank you very much.

Killian follows her into the room, and she hears his surprised expulsion of breath. She looks at him, but he is staring at the figure lying in the bed with wide, terrified eyes. So she, finally, ever so slowly turns her head so she can see the figure in the bed clearly.

It’s her.

A living, breathing replica of Emma Swan lies in the bed, her chest moving up and down with the slow inhale and exhale of one comfortably asleep. Emma takes large strides over to the bed, and she shakes the woman roughly, making sure to completely muss her hair in the process. No one ever looked that nice while they were sleeping. Especially not her.

The woman doesn’t so much as twitch even when Emma shouts at her to wake up. Emma’s breath comes in panicked little gasps now, and she falls backwards into Hook’s arms when they wrap around her. He whispers nonsense into her hair while she tries to keep tears from forming in her eyes.

There’s a clone. Of her. Sleeping like the dead inside a magical castle at the heart of a magical labyrinth. What the hell.

She draws in a ragged breath, and then she pushes herself away from Hook so she can look at him fully.

“That can’t be me, can it?” she asks.

“Magic has a funny way of making the impossible possible, love. I don’t have a better explanation to offer you,” he says.

“Right so what do we do then? How do we leave?” she asks, choosing to focus on what she can solve rather than the fuckery that is this particular magic trick.

“We were tasked with finding the heart of the labyrinth, and we have successfully done so. At the heart of the labyrinth, we have found you,” he says, puzzling out loud.

“And the gatekeeper of the castle asked to know what was in your heart, Emma,” he says, at last, and she forgets to breathe for a moment.

“So I need to face what’s in my heart to solve the labyrinth?” she asks, hoping that, perhaps, the answer to the riddle is something else. Anything else, really.

“It is highly possible,” he says.

Emma looks over her shoulder at her sleeping clone. “Why won’t she wake up, do you think?”

“If I had to guess?” he ventures, and she nods: “She’s under a sleeping curse.”

“So she needs a kiss to wake her up then,” Emma says.

“That is the only way to break a sleeping curse, yes,” Hook says.

Emma takes a deep breath. “Okay,” she says, and then she waits until her heartbeat slows down before she finishes: “Then, Killian,” she doesn’t miss how his eyes go wide with wonderment at the use of his name, “why don’t you wake her up?”

“Emma, love, I don’t think that—”

“Well, I do. You have to at least try, don’t you?”

“Are you quite certain?” he asks, and she is comforted by the tremor in his voice.

“Yeah, I’m sure,” she says, and she takes his head, guides him toward the version of her that is sleeping in the bed. “Wake her up, Killian.”

He looks at her, long and hard, before he kneels by the bed. She watches as his bends over her sleeping form, and she sees him hesitate when he is only a moment away from kissing her. When their lips finally do touch, everything around her shatters.

\---

She inhales sharply, and it feels like her whole body is filling up again, not just her lungs. She flexes her fingers and wonders when exactly she fell into a horizontal position. She opens her eyes, and Killian is hovering over her, concern etched into his features.

“Are we home?” she asks. Her voice is scratchy as though she hasn’t used it in awhile.

“We’re home, love,” Killian says, brushing her hair out of her face, and then helping her to sit up.

She reaches out and touches his face, letting him know that it’s alright. He takes his cues from her very well because he’s kissing her then, and this time it is actually _her_. Good kisses, it seems, lead to other very, very good kisses, she muses.

He breaks away as the door opens, and she hears Henry on the other side shouting, “I thought I heard something in here!” And then he’s inside the room, looking at her, running to her side, and throwing his arms around her.

“Mom!”

“Hey kid,” she says, placing a kiss on the top of his head.

Regina is the next one in the door, and she stops dead in her tracks at the sight of Emma. Emma smiles weakly at her, and the hesitant smile she gets in return is nothing like the creature from the labyrinth. Emma tightens her hold on Henry, but she rests her head on Killian’s shoulder.

Yeah, they’re finally home.   


 

**Author's Note:**

> For the CS Secret Shipmates exchange on Tumblr. 
> 
> Inspired by Labyrinth and Alice in Wonderland and owes its happy ending and pretty much all of its contractions to my wonderful, amazing, and incredibly tolerant beta, [homeskull_bob](http://archiveofourown.org/users/homeskull_bob/pseuds/homeskull_bob); Shannen, you are a saint, and I couldn't do it without you. 
> 
> To my Shipmate: Again, I hope you enjoyed it, and you found various things that you liked! It was great fun writing for you. Enjoy the premiere!


End file.
